Plastic pollution – Businesses underestimate amount of packaging waste they produce by 50%, report finds
6th March 2018 | Recycling
UK businesses are drastically underestimating the amount of plastic packaging waste they produce while paying “barely anything” to deal with the problem, new research claims.
Britain generated 2.26 million tonnes of plastic packaging waste in 2015, according to the latest available Government figures. But the true figure is likely to be more than 50 per cent higher – 3.5 million tonnes – according to sustainability consultancy Eunomia. It analysed the composition of UK waste and found that the system for calculating recycling rates is “structurally inclined to over-estimate” success.
Official figures state that 39 per cent of plastic packaging produced is recycled by the true figure could be just 23 to 29 per cent because of fundamental flaws in the way waste is measured, according to the report published on Tuesday.
Plastic Pollution
Even the highest rate that the researchers consider plausible would have meant the UK missed its EU plastic packaging recycling targets in every year from 2008 to 2012. The official estimate of the total amount of plastic packaging is based on a study conducted for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) by Valpak, the UK’s largest recycling compliance scheme.
The key issue is that the quantity reported as recycled often reflects a measurement of waste which includes moisture and other contaminants. The amount that companies say they produce, on the other hand, is reported when it is clean, dry and free from extraneous material and contaminants, according to Eunomia.
This tendency to overestimate the amount recycled is especially prevalent when waste is exported for processing which most of the UK’s plastic refuse is, the consultancy added. UK businesses that are required by law to pay for recycling generally pay into compliance schemes to discharge their legal obligations: the more packaging they produce, the more they pay.
More information available on the website below